Among the most unconventional sleuths who populate the mystery genre, Cassandra “Cass” Neary stands out. She is an alcoholic photographer whose career flamed out more than 30 years ago when she was immersed in the punk rock scene. Cass is on a perpetual collision course to save herself, finding solace in alcohol, drugs and photography.
Cass is the kind of person that few people would want in their lives, but author Elizabeth Hand makes it easy to care about this perpetual outsider whose knowledge that she wasted her talents subconsciously dictates her actions.
“I’m the ghost of punk, haunting the 21st century in disintegrating black and white, one of those living fossils you read about who usually show up dead in a place you never heard of,” Cass says, reflecting.
In “Hard Light,” Cass submerges herself in the 1970s music scene and its aftermath when she escapes to grimy North London. Her plan is to meet with her longtime boyfriend, Quinn, following a disastrous time in Iceland. Quinn is nowhere in sight, and the nomadic Cass ends up doing menial errands for a low-level mobster, crashing at decaying apartments and eventually ending up at a dilapidated Cornwall farmhouse. On one errand, Cass delivers a package to Poppy Teasel, who made a name for herself as a hard-core groupie in the early 1970s before becoming a punk singer with a cult following. Cass finds herself on the periphery of a series of murders that involve film noir, Paleolithic icons and former musicians whose fleeting fame ended decades ago.